24 - Small Fires
by teddybowties
Summary: Harry sets a park on fire... and pulls a Braveheart. Also, whumpage and mystery happens.
1. Chapter 1

The thirty foot treant's huge leafy fist swiped down at me, flying just over my head with the force of a jetliner. My head rang from one blow already, and my left ear dripped warm blood as I dipped to one side, grabbed my mother's amulet out of habit, and considered drawing on the power of the Winter Mantle as I urged my burning legs to run faster.

The wind whipped my face. I spun, then sprinted off toward the tree line in the opposite direction of the treant. My eyes stung as the crisp fall air changed direction abruptly, and the torturous clomping footsteps that told me the treant was still there just... stopped.

But I didn't. Oh no. You couldn't pay me.

Closing my eyes in pure exhilaration, I ran blind, using my ears for direction as I pulled myself into the shadow of a tree I'd been aiming for and flapped my hand behind me, strengthening the spell I'd just prepared with the adrenaline-zapped shreds of my will.

"Noctus ex illuminus!" I croaked, nearly peeing myself as I felt the treant's ambling car-sized footsteps stomp toward my hiding place through the vibrating ground.

A shimmering figure, handsome and tall and a little bit rugged in his black shirt and duster, popped into place beside me and waited, staring at me and grinning.

"One more step, big and ugly," I murmured, grinning up at my double, "Just. One. More."

I chanced a glance back around the thick oak, saw nothing. I turned to face the forest, away from the thin open edge of the tree line. My breath came heavy and hitched, and my ribs felt like the murder bone from Space Odyssey.

The illusion I'd cast of myself was holding, though- I could feel it running away from me, following along right on top of a ley line that lay deep under the park grounds, and I could feel the creaking treant's footsteps loping away after it.

My turn to run again, then.

I rose to my feet, feeling nausea rise in my throat as I shoved myself off the tree and forced one foot in front of the other. At least I was moving again, I reasoned as I trotted and tripped through sticks and stones and the occasional mud pool, following a less-used hiking trail.

When I got to the field on the other side of the forest, the rain had stopped, and the Carpenters' tent shimmered into sight from beneath Molly's veil, their flashlights flicking around like anxious fireflies.

"Not yet!" I choked, waving my arms wildly as I headed for the tent, "Not yet!"

I skidded across the wet grass and dove into the mud face first, unable to keep my legs under me.

The tent shimmered out of sight again, and I groaned, turning over on my back just in time to see the treant over the top of the forest canopy, his huge torso pouncing down on something at his feet. I felt the illusion snap back to me along the ley line, just like I'd planned, and fought back a wave of dizziness, right on cue.

Then I raised my left hand, snapped my fingers, and yelled,

"Globus Marcasse fulminas!"

And blue ball lightning roared from my outstretched middle finger along the ley line, straight up the treant's...

A cloud of dark smoke issued from the place it was standing, flinging it into the air in a violent acrobatic convulsion of black plumes and splintering wood. Its brief scream pierced the Illinois twilight, and then a howling orange flame burst up over the camp grounds.

"Anyone up for s'mores?" I managed. Then I fell face first into the mud.

After a moment of silence, Michael's voice arrived with the rest of the normal night noises, but my left ear, the one the treant had blown, was the only one upright and not filled with mud. Basically, the reception was low, by that point.

"Harry, you set the forest on fire. Mab called Molly- she left, but she wasn't thrilled. Your nose is bleeding from the adrenaline punch. Are you strong enough to-"

Grumbling a friendly Mab-shaped curse which filled my mouth with squelchy, squishy mud, I then called up the Winter Mantle just long enough to sit up, wave my hand, and whisper, "Ventus iclo procellus!"

The energy of the spell left me, and I felt the steady, dim crackle of fire over where the treant had fallen stop along with the rain again- my magic had drawn the moisture out of the surrounding storm front, just like I'd planned. Then a shivering fit shook all six foot nine of my timbers, and I ran out of breath with a grin, falling back into the mud again with my butt in the air.

The moon shone down on my other face for a minute, and then I passed out.


	2. Chapter 2

I woke up with Murphy's black work boot perched on my ass, her pint-sized blue-eyed blondness eyeing me, I imagined, like a beefeater's pet parrot.

She'd been camping with Maggie on the other side of the camping grounds, in a pink pup tent.

"Don't move, Harry," she muttered, heel-kicking my exhausted butt over and turning me onto my side with the leftover force. Then she levered her P-90 at my nose and finished the sentence. "Don't. Move."

I sniffed a trickle of blood back into my nose at the sudden intrusion, looked at the new shiny gun and said, "Is that the old one? Where'd you find it?"

Murphy snorted and looked down at me, then knelt down next to my face.

"None of your bees. Just making sure you're awake, Dresden," she murmured, brushing at some of the older blood on my face. "Michael asked me to come over and take a look at you, because he's busy helping the campers get out of your brand new firebreak, but he'll be back soon to help me with you. In the meantime..."

The mouth of Murphy's P-90 found my face again and nuzzled my upper lip.

"Don't move. That adrenaline surge from the Winter Mantle almost killed you. I checked your pulse- it's racing, Harry. What's going on?"

I pointed my one clean hand to the picture of the Grinch on my once black tee shirt.

"Our hero's big heart is two sizes too lol? It's probably fine, 'Murph," I reasoned, managing a slightly stronger grin, "I must have drained my battery using the ley line. Forget about it."

I tried to roll over, but the P-90 nudged against my upturned cheek.

Karrin Murphy's heart shaped munchkin face blanched to a lovely shade of cream, and her blond hair bounced on her shoulders, threatening imminent violence. But then her small chest heaved up, down, and she put her hand on my head, rubbing her long pretty fingers through my mud-caked hair.

"Not on your fucking life. Harry, your heart almost burst. Molly had gone. Michael was over with the other campers, and you were down. Maggie was upset, and I..."

"Daddy?"

Maggie's voice came drifting out from inside Michael's tent.

I felt the blood rush from my face as I realized how I must have looked to her.

Coward. I couldn't even say one word to my own daughter.

Murphy turned to look at Maggie, saying, "Your dad's sick right now, honey- we shouldn't do anything to force him to move. Can you go back and wait in Michael's tent for me, just for a moment? If you can do that..."

Maggie nodded.

"Good. I need you to call Michael on Charity's phone. We need him back over here. Can you do that for me?" Murphy's hand brushed Maggie's long dark hair back from one ear.

Maggie looked down at me, her eyes widening on the blood that must have been crusting up my nose and left ear, and breathed a heavy, shaking sigh, balling her little fists before running off in the direction of Michael's tent again.

"Murphy," I gasped, feeling my chest tighten as the Winter Mantle inside me suddenly yowled through my nerves like a sick cat, then dropped off my radar.

"She shouldn't... be alone."

My vision became a tunnel again.

Murphy must have seen it in my face, because she pulled a deer in headlights for a second or two, then leaned in close to my ear and whispered, "What is it, Harry? Do you mean Maggie? The tent is only four feet away! What..."

My chest became a pounding waterfall suddenly, my vision wavering in and out with the flickering moonlight as I felt a rush of hot bile billow up and spill out from my mouth, burning my lips.

"N-no, Karrin listen to me. She can't... she shouldn't be alone! She..."

Murphy's face became a frightened little cherub's as my mouth grew thick and my tongue turned fuzzy.

"She who, Harry? Maggie? Molly? Please! Tell me what you-"

"Not her, not... Molly, not Maggie," I managed, my drowsy mind absently running through the other set of lyrics to Bad Moon Rising.

Murphy yelled something to someone across the grounds, as the faint sound of gravel crunching under truck wheels spilled over me.

I didn't feel like breathing deeply after that.

As strong hands lifted me into the bed of a truck, I tried again, and more words came out.

"Not... Maggie. Mab."

Someone gasped. Finally.

A vision of the moon like Steinbeck's pearl hit me then, as blood ran from my tear ducts, covering my pupils like the red sheer curtains at one of Toe-Moss's clubs. I stared at the sky with my head in the lap of a blurry blond midget, counting stars until I couldn't find any, until they all stopped blinking and began to grow wool.


	3. Chapter 3

When I woke, there were voices, wherever it was.

The rush of sound felt like a prison escape plan of Kleenexes was being dragged back and forth through my skull by way of my ears.

"... not his fault this time, Butters," I heard Murphy grumble. "It was the Mantle. Something with Mab. Just thought you should know in case the trouble here gets an itch to migrate and you don't get picked for the Away Team."

As I strained to catch the reply I was expecting, something along the lines of 'Isn't it always? I'm a doctor, not a...' I realized my eyes felt bruised, and tried to blink them anyway.

Someone yelped an 'ow!', and my brain remembered that that was what it sounded like when a rotary phone fell off the hook and plopped onto the floor, around me. Dammit. I'd fried the phone line.

But that was good. It meant my innate magic was still active. That was something, at least. But the Mantle of Winter was conspicuously absent.

"... m'wake," I mumbled. My voice sounded harsh and thready. My breaths were slow. My lungs heaved disproportionately to the air being moved by them.

I fumbled a blanket off me and tried to sit up, feeling like John Hurt in the Nostromo breakroom. Someone put their hand on my chest.

I blinked again and looked up.

"Michael."

"Harry."

Michael Carpenter's face was pale under the Former Knight of the Cross tan of Holy Softball Coaching Awesome, but his bright eyes locked on me with all the old professional concern.

"Hey, where are we?" I coughed, spewing a little post nasal blood on his restraining hand as I looked around the motel room, "After burning down your favorite national park, I was scared we wouldn't be Bronies anymore."

"Harry, you're my friend," Michael said again, easing me into the stack of motel pillows piled against the headrest, "We took a vote. All of us agreed we'd rather have you than the park. Even Charity."

"You mean," I choked, blinking as hot, happy man tears burned my eyes while I laughed, "I get to keep the secret decoder ring?"

"I was thinking about calling Thomas, Harry," Murphy cut in, reaching down to squeeze my leg, "but you pretty much killed that idea when you sleep-fried the phone. Any thoughts on how we should handle this?"

I stared at her for a few minutes, my head swimming with legions of naked Murphys doing Flashdance in their underwear.

Down, boy.

From what I remembered of what Murphy had told me, I wasn't in any condition to enjoy that. Which stung. I dashed the thought with a question.

"Where's Maggie?" I slurred, closing my eyes, and sank further into the pile of crisp pillows with a whuff.

"Maggie's safe with Charity, Harry," Michael said, reaching to place a hand lightly on my shoulder.

"Sowut? Wonnaseeyer... Mm-ggie..."

I thought extra hard about trying to mimic Charity's Sith Death Glare at my bedside's lack of sproglet, but suddenly my neck felt like a strip of thin rubber. My head lolled, and my eyes rolled back into their sockets like white plastic hippo food.


	4. Chapter 4

Fingers went to my neck and wrist. Once the blood rushed back to my brain, I felt like singing.

"Uh, sorry," I moaned, raising my head again as I looked over at Michael, then around the room again, sniffing the air. "I blacked out for a second. Back now. Is that KFC I smell?"

I threw off the second blanket and lurched to my feet, clinging momentarily to the edge of the bed. I stood, and looked over at Murphy, who was standing in the doorway. There was a red and white striped cardboard bucket sitting open and slightly crumpled near her left work boot. One hand was shaking, and dangerously close to her gun.

"Karrin. I don't know what happened to me, but I... oof!"

Something spicy and delicious hit me square in the face, right on the cusp between the bridge of my nose and my Third Eye.

Michael reached out to catch my arm, throwing a short frown at Murphy as I staggered back and fell against the bed.

I gasped at my sudden lack of air, then held up the chicken leg, waving it feebly.

"Gee, Murph," I panted, holding my chest and grinning as she came closer, the chicken forgotten- except maybe by me. "Don't leave it out there, it'll get wet! It's still raining!" I poked a trembling finger at the lonely bucket of golden breaded goodness, my mouth hanging open as my eyes unfocused on Murphy and stared past her to the returning rainstorm on the horizon outside.

"I think I'll go back to our room now and check on Charity and the kids... it's late," Michael murmured, edging out of the room toward the door with wide eyes and a smile behind one gigantic hand.

Murphy grunted without turning.

"Did you learn how to speak Guy from J'onn J'ones, Murph?" I managed. "I'm impressed! I mean, I always wondered... and now seemed as good a time as any to ask you, so..."

Murphy muttered something incoherent. Then my best guy friend, Former Knight of the Cross Michael Carpenter, shrugged his shoulders and cringed, abandoning me to my fate.

"Call us if there's any change, Karrin- come get me if you have to. You know which room..." Michael said, swallowing his grin as he held the door open for a moment and looked at both of us. Then he pulled it closed. I heard the click of the locking mechanism, then his footsteps trailing off, and he was gone.

Karrin Murphy didn't turn to watch the empty door.

Instead, she just looked at me. There were angry tears running down her face.

I threw the chicken leg to the floor and straightened to my full height.

"Thank you for not saying anything," Murphy mumbled, her golden hair drooping with her shoulders as she put one little hand against my pyjama'd chest.

"Duckies, Dresden?" she breathed, looking my rubber-ducky-dotted flannel pyjama shirt and bottoms (with handy pockets) up and down. "You're such a pansy. If I was still a cop, I'd arrest you on behalf of the fashion police."

My legs moved apart a little as she came closer, in for the kill. My lips came apart; I wanted to lick something, suddenly. The room felt hot.

Murphy grabbed my right butt cheek and squeezed.

I looked down at her, my face muscles feeling sullen and confused.

"Uh, Murphy? Are you a Pod Person? Because I would totally..."

Her knee, sheathed in comfortable jeans, came up and slammed me in the stomach.

"SHIT MURPH!" I gasped, and fell back on the bed, curling up onto my side. "I'm a sick man!"

After a moment, I flopped limply over the modern barf-mauve bedding, still heaving hard breaths and holding myself. Through the agony in my gut, I laughed gratefully into the pillows as the room spun a little.

"Sit. Stay," she said, going to the door and lifting the bucket of fried ambrosia with one hand before trouncing over to my place of pain, "I killed the KFC for you, Hemingway. In the rain. Be nice to me by keeping still and resting."

"Yes, ma'am," I whimpered dutifully. The room wobbled a bit more.

Then she took hold of my jaws, cracked em open, and stuffed a whole breaded chicken breast between my teeth.


	5. Chapter 5

I woke to a small shuffling sound.

The curtains were drawn. But by what little light did manage to filter in past them, I reckoned it was daytime.

That sound...

"Murph?" I called out, driving my eyelids open.

"Aunt Karrin's not here, Daddy," a soft voice mumbled close to my ear.

I froze, and felt my heart start racing again, enough to drive my blood pressure right through the roof. It made my head ache.

Was she on the bed with me?

Something as large as my giant cat Mister and small enough to ride my ginormous foo dog Mouse was rummaging in the blankets next to my left arm. So I lifted it.

"Can't see ya," I sighed, taking a deep breath and lowering my outstretched hand in the general direction of the lump, "Might be a monster. Or a v- uh, I mean might be a... ah dang it. What are you, squirt? Are you a faerie?"

I smacked the lump as though I was holding a feather, tapping here and there every time I heard a squeak.

"Hrm... I dunno... might be a bird... or... a giant snail..."

I smacked the lump again, grabbing a tiny butt through the covers, and heard another squeal of delight.

"Are you a giant snail, Lump?" I called out, and tried to stifle a snort by sticking my finger up my nose.

The lump squiggled in place, crawling around under the blanket, and I laughed aloud. Couldn't help it.

"You're contagious, Lump! I think... I've... caught you!"

I squeezed a little shoeless foot through the bedcover, and got a bright happy little giggle from the lump for my effort before it whuffed and snuggled against my side.

Seeing my opening, I heaved a sigh and said, "So, Lump. We don't want you suffocating under there. How about you come out now and tell me if they fed you the good stuff for breakfast or one of those creepy shredded cardboard things that they dust with powdered sugar and lie to you right on the box about?"

The lump stopped moving; I stopped smiling.

"What's suffercatering mean?" Maggie asked, backing out of the bathroom. "Daddy is there someone here?" Her tiny voice raised an octave as she looked at me. There was a red piece of puffed popcorn in her hair.

My mental manscream raised about ninety dead people and a frilly skirt.

Think Harry, I told myself, tamping down on my hysteria. Thinkthinkthinkthinkthink. Don't do this. Don't alarm her.

But I looked down at the lump in the blankets, and felt the blood drain from my face.

"Maggie," I said, scrubbing a hand over my face as I stared slightly away from Maggie's head and at a lamp near the door, avoiding the possibility that I might Soul Gaze my daughter, "I love you like Molly loves gore movies and Mouse loves drooling. Now go find Aunty Charity. Daddy needs to... look for, uh... bedbugs. I don't want you to get bitten, lose a pint of blood and turn into a zombie, 'kay? Hop Scotch kiddo, make it so!"

Well shit.

I oughta be in pictures.

I waved my arm straight ahead like Captain Kirk, then smiled at her as she stared at me for a moment, then down at her new Splattercon little girls size tee before going out the door and shutting it quietly behind her.

As I listened, I made a mental note to myself: Must remember to kill Molly later for exposing my daughter to, you know, all the cool stuff. Like dark tee shirts and tabasco popcorn.


	6. Chapter 6

Waiting for the click, I slid my eyes down over the lump in the blankets.

When I heard the door close and lock behind Maggie, I slowly raised my hand to my forehead, pressed my shaking fingers to my Third Eye, and opened my Sight.

Then I wrapped the top hem of the blanket around my fist and flung myself back off the bed, spine first, screaming, "DEATH AWAITS YOU!" so hard my lungs burned.

Black tentacles pooled in the middle of the bed; I could see black ectoplasm crawling and bubbling where I'd been lying.

Last night's chicken dinner threatened me with alimony, and my throat constricted from the burn.

"Hey, what are you? How'd you get in? Were you here the whole time, or did you hitch a ride with Santa Claus?"

I felt around the floor and found the chicken leg I'd dropped. I pitched it at the seething black mass and sighed. As I watched, the chicken leg hurled into the air, touched a black tendril, and dissolved instantly.

"Hey, didn't I see you in Final Fantasy? I mean, that was some good work in the beginning, but in the later ones you were just sort of... a meatball with extra arms. Light on the sauce. Not that there's anything wrong with spaghetti!"

I shrugged, momentarily satisfied.

"Enough questions, little tasty one," the black mass said, long roiling tentacles seething back and forth as they rolled across the bed.

I pulled on a lamp cord and dragged the rectangle glass lamp down to the floor; it broke in my hand, cutting me a bit across the palm. But all I needed was the long tube inside, anyway.

I wiped my blood on the copper piping, looking over my handiwork, glancing up at the black mass of tentacles ever so often. My face, I hoped, was reminiscent of Murphy when she rage cleans her guns.

"I'm only going to ask you one more time, you Cthulhu reject," I said, scratching spells into the bloodied plastic casing around the copper with my fingernails, "Name. Quest. Average flight velocity of a swallow. You know the drill. I'm the Black Knight and the Guy at the Bridge, and you are?"

Gurgles of thick laughter erupted over the black thing, making its slimy, oozing surface shine and glop upward in little sprays of dark liquid.

"Little mortal! I was hiding in that treant! I drove it mad. I drove it to find you!"

The moment my brain started humming the theme from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, it seemed somehow inappropriate for the Mood. But it was On.

The tentacle thing rose up from the bed like a vortex of black slimy arms and teeth, and all of that went gunning for my head, clicking and clacking and coming together and apart again in a spinning funnel.

I pursed my lips, called up my will, then tightened my grip on my makeshift blasting rod, pointing it at the Midgar reject as I screamed, "eB!"

My head swam as the power left me, but at least the black roiling thingawhatsit enjoying the bed formerly known as Enticing sprang up and down again, plopping back down to the half-exposed mattress in a sploosh of spreading ectoplasm. But I knew it wouldn't last. I picked up a piece of glass corner from the ruins of the lamp on the floor and sliced my bleeding hand again across the back, nicking something (the Palmar arch?) deep enough to draw a significant gush of Important Wet Red Stuff. I dragged my hand over the carpet, soaking the tight, boringly tan hooking with lots and lots of vital fluid. For kicks, I also smeared a smaller circle around the angry black ooze, staining the bed through to the mattress. I invoked my will, infused the double circle, and...

Suddenly, there was a knock at the door.

Someone was trying the door's keycard...

Click.

Click.

Bing!

Skrrr-ik!

Krskooowish...


	7. Chapter 7

Lurching across the floor for the door in a haze of blurry white shapes where the furniture had been, I cried "Hexus!" and shoved energy out through my bleeding palm, smacking the door's electric card reader with a quick and dirty blast of no workies mojo.

I closed my eyes, and tried to recall the linking spell I'd first used with Elaine. I nearly went sprawling as I swayed in place where I knelt on the ruined motel carpet, my desperate mouth gaping like a fish as I focused roughly a third of my brainpower on my oxygen requirement. Then I gathered my fraying will...

"Charity," I sent, my eyes leaking tears at the effort. Could I find her? Was it even her outside the door? Would they ever start making Twinkies again?

"... What? Harry? What is it? How are you doing this?"

In the wake of that unhelpful deluge, I had the strangest sensation of groceries being dropped.

"Charity," I sent numbly, staring down at my blood-covered hand and the spreading puddle beneath me on the tan carpeting, "um, um... sorry. Lemmee... lemme try again. See there's... oh this is funny... there's a... there's a Black Pudding on my bed, and I have a leak."

"What are you talking about, Harry? Did you have an accident in your sleep? I'll call the front desk."

"Christ, Charity! I'm... making red all over the floor and you want me... want me to itemize? I am NOT slowly dying of exsang... um, exsangui... blood loss on a crap motel carpet with... with the world thinking I caught Dysentery on the Oregon Trail! Ooh, the floorshreallywet..."

"!"

The front door turned on its side like a capsizing ship, and my left hand clenched. Then that hand, arm and shoulder all went numb. I was bleeding out. Very slowly. From my hand. Deadpool would have whipped out a camera and taken a selfie.


	8. Chapter 8

My vision smashed sideways into the blood-soaked rug in a haze of smeared rainbow, like a Jenga player on a Special Trip. My blood looked all neon and sparkly in the luminol! Wait...

Then I realized- I'd left my Sight open.

Nobody else who managed to get through that door would be able to see the Pudding.

I stared at the Pudding, my eyes pulling upwards toward it where it banged and gnashed against the double circle I'd drawn in my blood.

A tentacle shot out, slamming against my circle like it was trying out for professional hockey.

Another tentacle slammed against the circle, and another.

Another.

"Ow," I said flatly, blinking defiantly at my new headache, as if the old one that had ended in my, uh, giving birth from my head to a Spirit of Intellect I'd unknowingly been pregnant with for several years hadn't been enough.

The blows were piling up evenly, meticulously.

I closed my eyes against the ache in my head and began counting the time between blows, feeling each strike like a physical beating through my mental barriers.

One, two, three, strike!

One, two, three, strike!

One, two, three, strike!

As I thought about it, it sounded suspiciously like something was on my mind. Again. Damn it, Mab, you rapist.

My face felt like silly putty after several minutes, and I could no longer feel my left side. The thickly stained carpet underneath my body was only a dim memory as I looked up at the thing on the bed with new eyes and smiled, showing my teeth. Probably. It was hard to tell what with half my face being numb and all.

"You sure you didn't get fired from the set of Doctor Who? Because you suck," I breathed, panting in time to the rhythm of the banging tentacles.

Shrill, hard laughter came bubbling up from the Black Pudding, and I could feel myself slipping into a haze.

"Pot, kettle, Wizard," it drawled as it drummed harder against my circles, "As I recall, I'm not the one who performed an ancient fertility rite with the Winter Queen. If you don't let me out soon, you're going to bleed out, deliver a child or have a stroke- perhaps all three. Take your pick."

"Gee. What happened to the Winter Mantle?" I asked, elated.

The voice of the Black Pudding boomed in my ears. It reminded me, strangely, of a very soft jam session.

"That is what you must discover. I am not a nanny, Knight of Winter."

I sighed and did the only thing left to me- I pressed my fingers to my forehead and closed my Sight.

Reality rushed back in like grey moldy soup, thick and indecent. And fuzzy.

I wasn't going to get anywhere by going too deeply unconscious, either; but I did have to talk to Me Myself and Id eventually.

So, I thought, a couple seconds of down time ought to do it.

I closed my eyes, let go of my will, and felt the circles collapse.

The bed creaked softly once, and then the Black Pudding took its true form in a flash of blue-white light off-camera.

"What's up, doc?" I asked, employing some quick and dirty sensation-reducing techniques involving mental images.

I kept my eyes shut tight as I thought of a strainer, then some aluminum foil. Wrapping the strainer in a thick layer of the foil, I then placed it on my head, and imagined a giant microwave. Then I opened the microwave door, and stepped inside. Because Signs. Duh.

A soft, nibbly voice said near my ear, "Not Up, Star Born. Our destination lies Ahead and Downward. You don't need a lantern, I trust?"

"Okay, okay," I panted at it, wishing I had the strength to groan. "But I'm not wearing the blue and white dress for a fistful of Zorkmids."


	9. Chapter 9

A gate to the Never Never, a magical dimension that mortals called Faerie, popped up suddenly in the middle of the floor, probably cast from behind the door by the Pudding. I could feel the magical presence of the gate, winding across my psyche like one of Murphy's family picnics... only without the food and entertainment.

"Hold still," the Pudding said from somewhere to the left of me, "in your condition, if you try to enter the Never Never, you'll be easy pickings. Even for the Spiders. I will provide a suitable substitute for the Mantle while en route to our destination."

Something wet and cold and contained began oozing over my body, and I had a sudden flashback to the Han Solo versus Carbonite Celebrity Death Match. And by the way, Han And Greedo Both Shot at the Same Time. Bite Me.

A crawling sensation crept over my skin, covering my ankles, my calves, my knees. The cold substance started up over my thighs, transforming my rubber duckie pyjamas as it gave me a rather disturbing wedgie. It crept over my back, meshing with my spine and leaving me doing my best Robocop impression on the floor of the motel.

"Fuck, that's cold!" I managed, trying unsuccessfully to bite back on the chatter of my own teeth.

But the stuff kept creeping over me, filling my pores and shoving into me. Changing me. It felt like a tsunami of ice had suddenly decided to make out with my skin.

Gooseflesh crumpled me up in a little ball when it was over; I lay there shivering, wondering absently if this was how ice cream felt after they put the ice in.

"Try to stand up," the Pudding said from no particular location. "You'll find you won't miss your old... self. Once we find Mab, my contract with you is done, and I retract my power. Do you understand, Knight of Winter?"

"What do I look like, Cinderella?" I breathed, riveted as my exhalation turned to ice, the spent breaths curving into white butter curls like the flames from the mouths of carvings of Kukulcan I remembered from the pyramid in Chichen Itza.

I stared at empty air for a moment, trying to construct a logic chain that actually got me somewhere before I got up and ambled to the bathroom mirror.

So we were going into Faerie to find Mab. Fair enough. I didn't have the Mantle, for some reason. That would be a problem. But I had the Pudding's gift of power to counter that, at least for the duration of the mission. But where would we come in at? Faerie wasn't exactly the kind of place you brought your friends to for a good glass of port and a cheese tasting. In the Never Never, the cheese eats You, the wine is blood, and the art jumps out at everyone. With teeth and claws. And ample... tracts of land.

Before I realized it, I had gotten to my feet and was standing in front of the motel room's bathroom mirror.

My entire lower body below the navel was covered in a sheath of moving silver that seemed to ripple like a silk cloak when I moved. My feet were encased in thick silver boots, narrow and fine, a succession of shells which grew into greaves to the knee then flowed up onto my thighs and around my buttocks. Something of the stuff was attached to my spine, almost like a cybernetic implant; I could feel the weird liquid of the symbiotic armor inside me, feeding through my nerves, filling my body with the Pudding's strange energies. There was a space between the high points of silver that flared slightly out into crystalline waves of silver that bared the front of my hips, and I could see the line of hair that ran from my navel to my bits had been showcased provocatively in the wide cutout.

"What the hell?" I choked, touching the suggestively exposed bare spot between my navel and my toy chest. "Great. I'm Sydney from Vagrant Story. I hope nobody sees me in this."

The Black Pudding's rubbery malboro laughter echoed from everywhere, jangling around inside my head and rattling my bones and brains.

"The Red Caps are coming," it said simply, still not revealing itself as its voice shattered my ears from every corner of the room.

And it was true; there was a hard pounding at the door to my motel room.

Someone called out, "Mister Dresden? Are you in there?"

A man I didn't recognize. Well, it was either the cops or the super, so to speak.

I glanced around the room for a moment, my brain idly noting at the last minute that my staff and the makeshift blasting rod were now nowhere in sight. Fucking faeries.

My sigh was a bit involuntary, story of my life. But I cracked my neck, put one foot over the gate to the Never Never pooling on the blood-soaked floor, and let gravity do the rest.


	10. Chapter 10

I was falling when I realized one Very Important Thing about the Black Pudding.

All that talk about being my guide through the Never Never and leading me to Mab, and the little shit bailed on me.

I had been about to curse out loud when my back suddenly struck something sharp and...

Slippery?

I didn't have time to argue with myself as my body tumbled like a heavy marble down the side of what appeared to be a gigantic ruby mountain.

Bap.

Bap.

Bap.

Squiiiick.

Bap.

Bap.

Bap.

Squiiick.

Ever so often my naked chest, biceps or face would collide with the glass on the way down. Except for that, or maybe because of it, I felt like the rampaging boulder in the Indie movies.

"I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die, I'm gonna dieeeee!" screamed that small part of my brain I hadn't heard from since part one of Storm Front. Yes I read. That was in Storm Front too, remember?

But what I really said was something like this.

"Most high bap and exalted lord general bap Toot-Toot I request your presence bap immediately for a very important bap matter which requires your bap attention forthwith!"

Something whizzed by me. Eventually.

Toot hooted when he saw me, and a second later a woosh of lavender faerie dust blew up over me.

I would have coughed, if I'd had the time. Instead I just gave him my best smashy Hulk glare and rasped, "Stars and Stones, Toot, get me off this thing! I'm gonna be wizard meat!"

Toot's giggle was silvery as he saluted, then pointed down to the ground. Which was two inches from my face.

I stared up at him and grinned, letting out a hard breath as I took in my surroundings.

I was stuck in a faerie spell upside down two inches from the ground on a giant ruby mountain.

"Damn, Toot," I rasped, hoarse from screaming. "You deserve recommendation, twenty medals, a harem and the Millennium Falcon for this."

As the little guy jumped up and down and flitted in an uneven circle around me like a bird drunk on redhol berries, I realized he must have grown five inches since the last time I'd seen him.

"Um, Toot?" I whispered, waving at him. I pointed down, then twirled my finger. "I would like to stand up now."

"Yes, Lord!" His eyes turned into saucers, and for a half-second I smiled.

Then I looked down, and wished I hadn't.

There wasn't anything but ruby red blood under the mountain. Water, water, everywhere.

Before I could think of what to say, Toot bobbed his little lavender loufa of a head and snapped the tiny toothpick fingers of one hand. Then he disappeared, and I fell the rest of the two inches.

My lungs filled with burning inhuman blood that tore down my throat, forcing me to glug like Nicodemus after the Naagloshii Swap Meet on Demonreach.

Hazy red liquid, thick and final, furled over me like new fern fronds, and I went under.


	11. Chapter 11

"Can we eat him, Kirama?" a gruff voice scratched, trailing away into the distance as I sank into half-asleep land again for a minute or two.

"Not unless you want to explain to Bhumata why you didn't ask him first, Kujata," came a calm sexless tenor.

A slap woke me next, fully this time, and I found a beautiful white-olive skinned, sparrow-winged hermaphrodite in heavy makeup, sheer silks and a white mini-tarbouch with a gold tassel standing over me, with a red hand and half a head of white hair.

"You are the Winter Knight, aren't you?" it said with a slightly false tinge of disinterest, revealing itself to be the owner of the smooth, sensuous tenor.

I was a little startled to find that I felt an immediate attraction, despite my stuff being gift-wrapped in slithery living metal at the moment. So I opened my eyes and squeaked as I tried to say, "Uh, please don't eat me and are we still in Faerie?"

"He hauled you out of the sea, little Knight, on his fishhook," the gruff voice rumbled again, closer to me now. "I would have skewered you over my horns and roasted you in Bhumata's blow-steam. A good thing Bhumata is not surfaced yet."

Yet?

I turned to my left and noted that the strange horizon was a rocking line of purples and the occasional silver- we were in a boat. The boat was long as two men, pointed and curled abruptly at the tips like the Khussa wedding shoes of an Indian groom.

'Eclectic, much?" I rasped. 'I'd love to stay, but see, I'm late, I'm late, for a very important date."

I looked over at the center of the boat, and saw a... card table?

I looked again.

There was a stone table in the center of the boat, round, weathered. The game top was carved into it, with triangles, or squares maybe, making it look like Backgammon or Go or something. There were some pieces on the board, also weathered, small tokens made of some kind of greyish silvery wood that caught light and glinted vaguely.

"Who won?" I asked, jerking my thumb at the board.

I was trying ever so hard not to look at the giant bull sitting across the table from me. The game board was the only thing between us, and his eyes were rough-carved ruby jewels, gazing on me as though I was two chopsticks short of a takeout box.

No answer, either from the Arabic angel or the minotauros I was trying to avoid noticing.

In the corner of my vision, I could just see the bull rapping his hooves against each other, like a certain animated deer I saw once on a cartoon show over at Michael's. I kept waiting for the hooves to come off like little gloves. Just like that creepy damn deer. I tried, really I did. But I couldn't help myself.

"Are you going to take those off, show everyone your surprisingly delicate hands and then start hungrily wringing them as your tongue plops out, because you really want to lick something?" I asked, rubbing my throat. "... well, I want to warn you now, I taste like dog food. No one likes dog food. Except maybe naagloshii."

That elicited a chuckle from the bull-thing, and an audible shiver from the angel. Progress.

"Kujata," the angel warned behind me, his wings creating a subtle headwind though I could tell he hadn't moved from his position on the southern curled tip of the little boat, "... Mantle or no, he is still the Knight. We are guests here; he is above us in this."

Kujata the bull-thing cast black jewel eyes over me as I mulled his name. In a strange way, it was like the glance of a woman perusing another woman's business. As I stared at him, he sat back on his little boat bench and sighed.

"Well, Kirama," Kujata said, "he seems too scrawny to kebab. Perhaps a nice bouillabaisse? Those greaves bespeak me of a good mess of prawn..."

I groaned. It was going to be a long night.


	12. Chapter 12

Kujata... could it be? I wondered as I sat there, watching Angel and the Bull-Man play that strange game on the stone table together.

The smart part of my brain was yabbling on about how we should slip silently off the boat and make a swim for it. You know, the man in black that sometimes talks to me in my sleep? Well... good thing he's not the boss of me.

"So, Kirama, how did you two get here?" I mused, focusing my eyes on the red ruby mountain poking up from the water behind them, "And Kujata? That name sounds familiar. Very familiar. Aren't you two... um... supposed to be somewhere else?"

As I waited for an answer, I thought about where I'd heard their names before, recalling many items of interest.

Kujata and Kirama were part of an important ménage e trois in mythological circles, along with their buddy Bhumata, better known as Bahamut or Behemoth. Together, they represented one of the old world powers that held up the planet, literally, like the turtle and the dragon and the tree and whatnot. And, if I remembered correctly, according to certain cosmological texts attributed to one Ibn al-Wardi around d. 1348 CE, Bahamut was a monster fish-whale thingy larger than several planets, and upon his back there rested a bull, Kujata. On the bull, a mountain of ruby, and on that mountain, an angel, who supported the seven earths. Oh yeah. That explained 'them', but... why wasn't the mountain...

At some point I closed my eyes, because I woke to find Kirama pinching my shoulder, Spock-style, massaging the muscle in a disturbing display of intimacy I'd assumed was only reserved for Kujata. At the touch, I thought my skin would grow legs and crawl away, so heavy was his presence behind me.

"Wherever you go, there you are," the angel said softly, shifting somewhat in the boat as he pressed himself against my back.

"Oookay this is awkward," I muttered, trying to pretend I was faking that little nervous laugh.

This time, it was Kujata who spoke, as his weirdly articulate hoof moved a piece on their game board to another area, perhaps taking a pawn or something.

"I assume you mean to make him a proposition, Kirama?" Kujata said, his flat bull-nose darkening on a glum note, I guessed, because he still hadn't gotten the chance to eat me yet.

Well, I reasoned, you always have to wait too long at the best restaurants. It's why I order in.

Kirama twisted away from my backside, thank several gods, and came to stand to the right of me, his long, delicate fingers alighting on my head.

"Mab chose him, Kujata," Kirama breathed, eyes suddenly blazing with fervor as his sparrow wings extended a bit in a little excited shiver, "perhaps we should keep that in mind if we decide to... avail ourselves of his particular talents."

Kujata pointed a finger downward at the red water, and I chose not to look as he spoke again.

"I concur. Knight," he huffed, looking back at me, "we shall procure your services. What is your fee?"

The smart part of my brain considered babbling like a little girl and diving over the side. Screw the giant hypothetical Jaws frolicking under the boat, screw the disturbing angel and the hungry minotauros, screw everything. The shore couldn't be that far away, right? This was already sounding like nine kinds of bad, and I didn't want to make ten a chart topper.

"Well, that depends on what you want done," I heard myself say calmly, "I may be Mab's errand boy for now, but at the moment, I'm kind of looking for her. Got any clues as to..."

Damn it. I asked someone in Faerie a Question. God. Damn. It.

"Take our proposal, Wizard-Knight Errant," Kujata mused, showing a mouth full of decidedly un-bovine sharp teeth, "and we will see your quest renewed. We are not of Faerie- Fey Compacts do not bind us. But if you do not take our case, we will gut you and spit you."

Kirama smiled suddenly from my left side, his pale lips peeling back to show a double row of inhumanly lengthy sharp teeth nearly as long as his curling fingernails. "Is this enough?"

He held out some green strips; they looked like twenties.

I sighed; sometimes, it's just better to say yes.

"All right," I muttered, pocketing the money and forcing a smile as I unattached Kirama's hand from my shoulder, then pretended to consider their board game with my chin in my hand.

"So what is it you want me to do? Have you lost something?"

Kirama looked at Kujata, his mascara eyes curving into a frown that ran from his powdered white nose to his rouged mouth.

"Oh yes, Knight of Winter," the angel breathed, grinning that lipstick grin once more as he pressed his Khussa'd ankle to my back and pushed me toward the edge of the narrow boat, "... our minds. We've been fishing for them, you see... Bhumata must have taken them."

"Ever since the Outsiders," roared Kujata as he snapped his tail around and whipped me the rest of the way over, "we haven't been quite right."

"I hope you find Bhumata for us, down there," Kirama cried out in a merry voice as my face hit the red fluid surrounding the boat on all sides, "he hasn't been up here lately! Tell him he should Join Us..."

My mouth sucked red thick water like it was cheap ramen.

Even the minimal weight of my shiny faerie copout kudzu armor made it so, so easy to sink.


	13. Chapter 13

You want to know the reason I didn't want to look at the creepy bull-guy?

Because I was taking careful note of the ripples behind him, every time they surfaced.

As the red water flowed over me and I plunged, I started counting.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five.

Six.

My feet touched on something just as I got to seven.

That something swept me forward, forcing my hands and feet to catch on, riding my body against it as if it were a living thing.

"Bhumata!" I blabbed, unsealing my locked lips like the idiot I was, and the blood-water filled my mouth again.

But the big thing lunged, shooting forward, its shape out of sight, undulating in grand waves in the redness, and I was knocked free.

Suddenly, as I floated in the near-dark, I could see something of it move- I felt like a gnat on a blade of grass, staring up at the huge slab of cow that was gonna eat my perch. I would have said goat, but...

It was then that I realized that my 'random game that I only know about because I saw a poster for it in Bob's skull apartment' armor was doing something to the surrounding water. Bubbles were rising around me, clear bubbles, like the sprays of eggs from a sea sponge. What the? What, was I an air filter now?

I kicked in place, watching my legs swing out and in, out and in against the force of all that red liquid. My arms, I noted in dismay, were covered up to the elbow now in the strange, sinuous, gloppy silver of my 'armor', and I thought to myself, Wow Harry- must have rolled a + 7 curse weapon with that one. Any minute now it was going to go down my throat and out my chest, like the black goo in forbidding grey jars. Hell's Bells. I was not going out like that dude from Prometheus. Some things are important enough to say twice.

And the beast-whale, Bahamut-Bhumata-Buhwhatsit? Where was he in all this? With a certain panache, my subconscious reminded me as I turned my head on instinct and discovered a gaping maw wider and taller half-again than about fifty good-sized football fields. Pale marble-white gums filled with a forest of white sharp teeth clamped around me, quick as a round of political pinochle at the clueless White Council's company picnic. Hydrogen in-rush is a bitch, I realized, as I watched the giant's jaws clamp shut on a ridiculous amount of water, flushing the rest between its locking teeth in a terrific display of sheer vacuum.

The absence of the expelled water slammed me against that white forest of teeth, and my back cracked somewhere. I saw stars for a good half-minute, dangling from the tight wall of whale molar like an old piece of chewed gum. Creepy damn Fey armor- it was like wearing shiny treacle! Of Evil. But at least the water was gone. Then I felt the entire massive thing sway then cut to the right; that was my body's cue to drop to the ground and hang on. Naturally, I didn't do that.

I leaped off the teeth wall, aiming for the stupendous fleshy pale tonsil in the back. I was pretty sure it was a tonsil, and with both my arms out, I figured I'd manage at least a miss, hit one of the cavernous mouth ribs and cling anyway. I clung all right. The whale jerked to the left just as I slipped past the tonsil. First my wrist, then my ribs, then my elbow, all met whale in that order. That cracking sound spoke volumes as it echoed down the big creature's throat. I could have written a book.

"Shit!" I girl-squealed, growing pigtails and a frilly skirt at the thought of how many bones I'd just broken.

Then I started sliding again, as the whale veered off to the right once more, its towering shape lurching farther forward in the gigantic red sea surrounding the ruby mountain.

Safe to assume we were past the huge red rock at this point, I thought to myself as I peered dubiously down the whale's spelunk-worthy food chute.

"Hey Bhumata!" I called out, my voice breaking as I focused half my brain on those techniques Lash had taught me for blocking out pain, "So, what happened to Raven's fire sticks again? I forget!"

A fishy smell of dread pervaded me then; it didn't help that the whale belched right at that moment, sending an actual fish stench to billow up like the wrong smoke plume from the Vatican chimney, right in my face. The scent was more eau d' lutfisk, really, than mere dead fish or plankton.

I felt my stomach clench, then heave. Repeatedly.

After the fifth or sixth time, something like muffled laughter rumbled up from the depths of the gigantic creature, bringing with it the return of the noxious whale parfum.

That was it. My protesting wrist started screaming murder as my nose was raped by the smell; my ribs ached for a good old-fashioned barbecuing. Anything but this. My head lolled down dizzily, stopping only when my chin smacked my chest. Trouble is, my yap must have been closed too long, because the action dislocated my hyoid, you know, that bone at the bottom of your mouth that floats and supports the tongue? Yeah. Not fun. I choked, vomiting again, an action guaranteed to disturb the shit out of that Damned Bone. Again. This vicious cycle continued for a minute or two, until my nose opened up again and left my stinging eyes in the lurch. I stared down into the stinking, hideous abyss Bhumata called a throat for what I hoped was the final time, and in retaliation, my souring stomach packed up and took the kids down the fire escape. My eyes started to swim upstream at some point- I think they were trying to spawn. Then my fingers got to feeling real weak real fast, forcing me to let go of the slimy wall, and I tumble-slid down the wet, noxious tunnel.

What was it Thomas always said when things got Really Fugly?

Oh yeah.

Empty Night.


	14. Chapter 14

Kirama's face, sweet and beautiful and entirely rapacious with its cake of makeup framed in half a head of snowy hair, wavered over the small waves the wizard's body had made, his countenance skirting over the ripples like a toy sailboat.

"Well, that escalated quickly," he murmured, exaggerating a sniff with both shoulders before sitting back down at the stone table in the center of their own little boat, "do you think we convinced him?"

The bull in the front of the boat nodded dumbly, his squarish snarl of a face jutting down against his chin in dejection.

"It would have been better if you'd just let me barbecue his testacles, Kirama," Kujata breathed, as fire stormed from his great nostrils in two overzealous spouts.

Kirama sighed with two full angel lungs, then swept long pale fingers through the red water surrounding the boat. Then he rose up in a volley of circling sparrow's wings and strode over the man-bull, who was twiddling with a stone piece on the table board between them.

"Now now, my dear Kujata," the angel gasped, taking the bull's big head and tracing naughty patterns of sixes and nines over his thick flattened ears, "I'm sure we paid him enough. He's bound to come back in the next century or two, and you had testacles 'last' week. Remember that lovely chap who popped by? The one with the moustache and the trans-dimensional pillar he kept darting in and out of?"

Kujata snorted, and a searing heat sang against Kirama's face, frying the edges of his long side-hair.

"Yes, I do remember him, dear- he had the whitest teeth, and that moustache! Always muttering about some physician… didn't Mab say she knew a physician once?"


End file.
